"Shoot to Kill"

cried Jeff Jacoby this Sunday.
Predictable response really, the moment the first DVD player went out the plate glass window at Walmart you just knew Jeff would be yelling for firing squads.
"Looting" intoneth our laughing young senescence, is an economic crime that leads to human type crime.
Oh really?
This is the sort of tortured Cato Institute logic that Jeff dearly loves, facile and bloodcurdling at the same time.
After all just what is the original economic crime here? That the poor are rioting or that the hurricane breached the levee that La Famiglia Arbusto tried to fix on the cheap?
Now, just who is gonna do the shooting down there is open to question, the police have been out of ammunition until this weekend and the National Guard has been trickling in piecemeal. Moreover, the mobs down in New Orleans are now themselves armed. I say Jeff ought to throw in with the gangs, they're armed making them potential NRA adherents and the city's current anarchy is a thrving laboratory to test all his quaint notions about rugged individualism.
Jeff, if yer reading this, there is a golden opportunity for conservative civilization in those flood waters, why not fly on down to take charge?
The masses don't need water and bread, they need a thrilling ideology!
Anyhow, you couldn't do a worse job than Chertoff, Brown and Bush believe me.